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';' :,::' "'::] w, r I:'. ...:' q - :: -:: ',. - ......-: , ';---:j:'w I, " , " " , :, , : . Û , o , =t:: , ') , '. ::' , ,':" ., /' . . ;::::.: ::'>.( ;.:." , ,.. , , \ " o , : , o ; , , t , ; i;::t . : . f: .. l ,:_ ' "." _ ! '"' T,!k.i1f ; iIJ 'o::\':f !f.: :;t:t}'fii,.:::,:",; :,ó, v )'rIJÞ"O .i 4,(4!y "We have that slight droop in Alexander Hamilton's left eye to tha;nk for this!" . make music on a clarinet, and that what sounds most clarinettists do make lack warmth, passion, and tenderness. Fight- ing words, and local clarinettists haven't taken them lYIng down. We had lunch with Kell the other day, and found him astonished but unabashed by the ruckus he has kicked up. "A bassoon play- er I know claims I've started a junior revolution," he told us, stowing away his formidable pipe and ordering an omelet and a glass of beer. "I don't quite see how. I certainly had no inten- tion of offending anyone. What I was getting at is that my kind of playing depends on personal expression and the kind of warmth that we loosely call vi- brato. In classical music, for some rea- son, the clarinet is usually played cold and straight. I prefer the jazz boys' ap- proach to it. Their vibrato may be wild, but at least it's there." Mr. Kel1 was born in York, which he described to us as a very well-brought- . up city. He was born on the eighth of June, under the sign of Gemini, the Twins. "They give me a dual personal- ity," he said. "It's impossible for me to settle down. I have a feeling there is something in Gemini for the clarinet. Benny Goodman is Gemini, too, you know." Reginald's father is a compos- er and violinist, and Reginald's young- er brother, who was killed in the war, played the clarinet with the London Symphony Orchestra. Kell Senior started Reginald on a violin when he was seven, but Reginald disliked it. "Damned uncomfortable instrument to hold," he said. He gave up the -yiolin, and, at fourteen, school, in favor of a job making dust guards for train axles. Then he took to dropping in on the Sun- day-morning rehearsals of an orchestra his father had organIzed In York. Mak- ing music looked easier than making dust guards, and one morning he picked up a clarinet and gave an experimental FEßRlIARY 2. b, 1 9 4- 9 tootle. It charmed him. "1 must say I was pretty good at it from the word go," he said. "I took some lessons from a chap in a loca] theatre, and inside a year had given up my job in the engineering works and was playing professionally." After several years in theatres in Har- rowgate and then London, Mr. Kell won a scholarship at the Royal Acad- emy of Music. From there, he went to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and then to Sir Thomas Beecham's London Philharmonic, where, at twent) -four, he made his first appearance as a soloist, plaYIng the Mozart A-Major Concerto. In 1937, the Gemini moved him on to the London Symphony, and in 1939 arranged that he should be the only Englishman chosen to play under Tos- canini at the International Festival of Music, in Lucerne. During the war, he played for the B.B.C. and spent two years with the Liverpool Philharmonic. The Gemini thereupon returned him to London, for recording work. He made his New York début in December, at Town Hall, playing the Brahms Clar- inet Quintet. Vlith Mieczyslaw Hors- zowski, he is now recording two Brahms sonatas for clarinet and piano for Mer- cury Records. He s also giving lessons to a number of clarinettists who feel the need for more vibrato. Three of his pu- pils are young women. "I have only one objection to female clarinettists," he said. "1 like my pupils to stand while they play, and it invariably turns out that women want to sit down." Mr. Kell told us that he admires some bebop and that Benny Goodman seems to him easily the best of the jazz clarinet- tists. "Fundamentally, Benny can play the clarinet," Kell said. "That's very unusual among the jazz boys. He is a truly free Gemini." Kell is certain that he himself could not play jazz. "It's a young man's game," he said. "They extemporize. When I play, I forget about the keys and express my feelings about the character of the music, but I can't extemporize. I feel I must keep within the limits of respectability. I man- age to please myself, but I suspect that the very TNorst one of the jazz boys is freer than lam." . F AR WEST INTELLIGENCE: A new ice-cream stand has opened in Palm Springs-the From Moo to You. Encyclopedia Arctica O N a visit, recently noted in these pages, to the library of thirty-four thousand books and pamphlets on the